“This morning I was exhausted. And so were you. It…it was different.” She feels his hands on her shoulders. She wants to lean back against him.
“You have nothing to fear. I told you, I won’t touch you, Isabel.”
There’s something unsaid here, she thinks.Unless you want me to.It’s there in his tone, in the way his breath touches her hair. He’s so close. She could turn around and kiss him.
His hands leave her. She turns and watches him take off his boots, and then he climbs into the hammock and lies there, his arms folded behind his head, looking at her. His expression is guarded, as if he’s afraid she’ll see his true feeling. She wonders if it mirrors her own. She thinks maybe it does.
He smiles and says, “Come to bed, Bucca’s daughter,” and she takes off her shoes before climbing in, wearing her gown, chemise, stays, and all. Nerves make her motions awkward and jerky, and in response the hammock sways violently. Jack puts his left arm around her waist to keep her from falling out.
“I asked you to come to bed, not cast us both onto the floor,” hesays, and she likes the feeling of the laughter in him, the way it rumbles and quivers in his chest. The moment the hammock stops swinging, he removes his arm. She feels the break in contact between them like a rift. Shifting, she manages to create an inch of space between their limbs. It takes effort to maintain it. Jack says, “There. That’s not so bad, is it?” And if there’s a slight hitch in his voice, they both ignore it in favor of the pretense that it’s entirely regular for the two of them to sleep like this.
“It’s not,” she says, though she has no idea how she’ll get to sleep. Jack appears to have no such trouble. He bids her good night, and within a minute, his breathing slows to that of deep sleep. His eyelashes are very long. She didn’t notice it before. She wants to run her finger along the lines of laughter by his eyes, down his cheek, to the corner of his mouth. She wants to feel if his lips are as cushioned as they look.
She listens to Jack’s breathing, memories of George crowding along the edge of her mind. The way he held her on their wedding night; the way she wept once he slept, knowing he’d leave again in less than forty-eight hours. They fell asleep pressed together like sheets of paper in an envelope, the bed vast around them, but when she woke she found herself on the edge of it and him splayed in the middle. George slept like a starfish when he was ashore, as if he wanted to make up for the lack of space on board his ship.
No risk of that now; the hammock holds Jack and her closely together. Too closely—though she’s trying not to, her legs keep touching his. She likes the warmth of him against her. Slowly, her jitteriness abates. It doesn’t matter that they’re sleeping in the same hammock, she thinks. The crew won’t talk and no one else knows. She’s safe from rumor.
Underneath the hull of the ship, the sea stirs and groans. If she were to hear a voice in it now, telling her to swim, she wouldn’t answer. She’s far too comfortable lying here, with Jack sleeping beside her. But the sea only whispers, words too quiet for her to make out.
Chapter Eleven
“Who is Marianne?”
She’s standing in the bow of the ship, waiting for her first glimpse of France. The sun beats down on the deck, the sky is a cornflower blue flecked with wisps of cloud. It’s not at all warm thanks to the hard southeasterly wind, and Isabel has been thinking she should go below to get her cloak, but she doesn’t want to miss the moment land is spotted. Jack lowers his spyglass to look at her. She says, “You were talking about her in your sleep last night. The first night on the ship, too.”
They have shared the hammock the past four nights. The act of climbing in, of the two of them finding their spaces inside the canvas, has not become ordinary, but it has become natural to her. She knows it isn’t natural, not in the eyes of the world, but shipboard life is so far removed from anything resembling her regular existence she feels it hardly matters. She dreads the moment she and Jack will have to sleep apart again.
Jack puts the spyglass back to his eye, then hands it to Oppy. “Have a look. I can’t see it yet, but I know we’re close.”
He walks away, motioning for Isabel to follow him. By the gunwale, he says, “Mary-Anne, not Marianne.” He gazes at the empty horizon. “She was my fiancée.”
The blow of his words surprises her. She has no claim to Jack, yetshe feels as if someone has punched her. “I didn’t realize you were engaged to be married.”
“It was a long time ago.”
“What happened? In the dream, you sounded upset.”
“I must’ve been. I don’t remember. I’m afraid I must beg you to stop speaking of her. I have to concentrate.”
“I can’t see it, Captain,” says Oppy when they return to the bow. He passes the spyglass back to Jack.
Another ten or maybe fifteen minutes go by with the spyglass going back and forth between Jack and Oppy and the wind tearing at Isabel’s hair, then Jack calls, “I see it!”
He hands the glass to Oppy and points. “There. Two points off the starboard bow.”
Oppy looks and cries out triumphantly. “So it is! Fastest crossing yet, I believe, Captain.”
“You’re right. Should you like to do the honors?”
Oppy lowers the spyglass, smiles, then bellows, “Land ahoy!”
A roar goes up and Isabel is straining to see when Jack hands her the spyglass. His face close to hers, he points. “Right there. Do you see it, Isabel?”
He’s so close to her the smell of him distracts her: the wool of his jacket, a hint of salt following his seawater bath that morning, and another smell, something undefinably Jack, which she has come to relish.
She has spent the past three days going through Jack’s books, checking prices, amounts, sums, as well as climbing the rigging, lounging in the sun on deck, and learning the basics of navigation on the few occasions Jack had a moment to teach her.
“Just to the right of the bowsprit,” Jack says, pointing again. “Do you see it?”
